US and carriers

[uberjedi]

I am going to start a US campaign 1.6.1 historical vanilla.
Is it worth researching and building CVs?
Or should I tell Halsey, Fletcher, Nimitz and the rest to look for new jobs while I pump out BBs?

 

[Novacat]

Right now carriers are kind of bugged in that, when used as part of a CTF, they do next to no damage if the enemy has any fighters in the air at all. This means that even a 4-carrier CV4 CTF with hundreds of fighters can be stopped cold by outdated CV1s loaded with biplanes. This has relegated carriers to pretty much two niches.

1: Defending your battleships from enemy bombers.
2: Killing submarines.

Generally, these roles can probably be performed by your starting carriers, and it is not worth putting research into CVs at all. You might want to build a few CV1s/CV2s (depending on what you start with), but otherwise? Not really. Generally you want one or two fleet CVs loaded with pure fighters in your main battlegroup, while your smaller CVs hang out with your anti-submarine task forces with all-bomber loadouts.

 

[TheNexxus]

I miss the carriers from 1.5.4.

 

[MilesJ]

I miss the carriers from 1.5.4.

But weren't those carriers still an issue because you would lose all of your planes from land based aircraft attacks?

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

The game need an air combat phase to ship combat where any fleet with a large air contingent try not to engage with anything but their aircraft just like in real life. These battles should simply be part of the naval combat mechanics. Air crafts also should be a bit more decisive in general and the AI more careful operating without air support in areas where the enemy has it.

There should perhaps be two different types of strike missions, one for surface battle groups and one for carrier groups.

 

[ivhokie]

Carriers are far to weak compared to where they were historically. I wouldn't build many if you are trying to min-max. There are a few reasons why I tend to build them anyway. They existed in real life and I know the names of those ships by name and I want them. You really don't need to min-max to beat the Japanese Navy. Lastly Japan will typically park a task force in a port not too far away from you. Can you park your own fleet right next to them and start port striking.

 

[Ethereld]

Carriers are far to weak compared to where they were historically.

This is wrong, if the enemy fleet is unprotected Carriers can do more damage than their equivalent BB and with port strike in ports without AA they can absolutely devastate the enemy fleet.

The problem here is not so much that carriers are not superior to other ships but that their strength can be easily countered by another carrier or land based aircraft.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

This is wrong, if the enemy fleet is unprotected Carriers can do more damage than their equivalent BB and with port strike in ports without AA they can absolutely devastate the enemy fleet.

The problem here is not so much that carriers are not superior to other ships but that their strength can be easily countered by another carrier or land based aircraft.

Even if this was true your fleets should not always meet in fleet gun battles. Given the scope of WW2 there actually was very few gun battles. Right now more than 90% of all ships is sunk by naval guns. In reality less than 10% of ships was sunk by naval gun fire and most of those that were sunk from a very select few large decisive engagements, many at night.

 

[Ethereld]

Even if this was true your fleets should not always meet in fleet gun battles. Given the scope of WW2 there actually was very few gun battles. Right now more than 90% of all ships is sunk by naval guns. In reality less than 10% of ships was sunk by naval gun fire and most of those that were sunk from a very select few large decisive engagements, many at night.

I agree with you that it is too easy to spot and clash with the enemy strike force, but we should also remember that this is a game. If your ships where 90% of the war patroling waters whithout finding anything, being blown up by mines and land based aircraft as the RN was most players would say the naval game is boring.

But returning to CV remember that using them as floating airfields that avoided direct combat was an innovation brought by the Americans and Japanese in the Pacific Theater and only due to the decisions of admirals like Yamamoto and Nimitz because you can clearly see that the Japanese before the war were gambling for a decisive naval clash between BB fleets in the Philippines.

The rest of the navies used CV as support units that followed the main fleet in short hand to provide air coverage. If Jutland was to happen in WW2 or if the Italians had sailed to meet the British in a big guns battle then you can be sure both fleets would have a carrier present near the battle to cover the main fleets.

Maybe Paradox should add a floating airfields mission where you can tell your carriers to avoid combat and to do only naval strikes, but even then the current balance problem would make that mechanic useless as the other fleet could completely nullify your CV with a little air coverage.

 

[Perikles]

The game need an air combat phase to ship combat where any fleet with a large air contingent try not to engage with anything but their aircraft just like in real life. These battles should simply be part of the naval combat mechanics. Air crafts also should be a bit more decisive in general and the AI more careful operating without air support in areas where the enemy has it.

There should perhaps be two different types of strike missions, one for surface battle groups and one for carrier groups.

I also thought in the same direction. Between the spotting phase and the combat phase, there should be an air-ship combat phase as long the spotting takes place in daylight and the first spotting side has planes. And there should be a significant advantage for the side that spotted the enemy fleet first if both sides have planes, as IRL. A separate mission type would be OK or just one more aggression level between 'do not engage' and 'engage at low risk', were plane only attacks are tried with subsequent disengagement. Thus Midway style battles would become possible.

The prerequisite that the full spotting took place in daylight is because night attacks from planes to ships were not impossible, but very difficult. (There is an interesting report on the armoured carriers home page about the British fleet which tried it during the Japanese Indian Ocean raid but failed). And gameplay wise the BB and CA remain important.

 

[Monkbel]

Right now carriers are kind of bugged in that, when used as part of a CTF, they do next to no damage if the enemy has any fighters in the air at all. This means that even a 4-carrier CV4 CTF with hundreds of fighters can be stopped cold by outdated CV1s loaded with biplanes. This has relegated carriers to pretty much two niches.

1: Defending your battleships from enemy bombers.
2: Killing submarines.

Generally, these roles can probably be performed by your starting carriers, and it is not worth putting research into CVs at all. You might want to build a few CV1s/CV2s (depending on what you start with), but otherwise? Not really. Generally you want one or two fleet CVs loaded with pure fighters in your main battlegroup, while your smaller CVs hang out with your anti-submarine task forces with all-bomber loadouts.

This doesn't resonate with my experience on mtg. My US carriers have lots and lots of sunk ships in their history tab. Many more than my BBs.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

But returning to CV remember that using them as floating airfields that avoided direct combat was an innovation brought by the Americans and Japanese in the Pacific Theater and only due to the decisions of admirals like Yamamoto and Nimitz because you can clearly see that the Japanese before the war were gambling for a decisive naval clash between BB fleets in the Philippines.

Does that mean that maybe effective use of the floating airfield model should be locked behind some sort of doctrine tech? It seems like maybe carriers with zero doctrine might operate as they do now (e.g. you can put them in floating airfield mode but it's not very good). As doctrine develops they get better at detecting and avoiding other fleets, have a bonus for mitigating range issues in sea zones and get better at penetrating enemy fighter coverage, etc.

 

[Ethereld]

This doesn't resonate with my experience on mtg. My US carriers have lots and lots of sunk ships in their history tab. Many more than my BBs.

The same in my case, but it is worth noting that these sinkings came only after my BB and NAV Bombers had sent two or three Japanese CV to the bottom of the sea.

Does that mean that maybe effective use of the floating airfield model should be locked behind some sort of doctrine tech?

It could be a good idea.

 

[TheNexxus]

Maybe the range of land-based aircraft needs to be dialed down.

 

[Perikles]

Maybe the range of land-based aircraft needs to be dialed down.

What makes them also so strong compared to carrier based is the possibility to redeploy them in huge numbers unrealistically fast all over the world.

 

[ivhokie]

That isn't a bad idea, but if you were to do that you would have to severely rework air combat in general including air zones.

 

[TheNexxus]

Not necessarily. It just means that you wouldn’t be able to completely dominate the air space of every single land and sea zone in the game with the base 1922 or 1936 air units. Even a 25% reduction would be a meaningful change.

I wonder if you can add a redeployment delay. I know you can adjust the time it takes for a unit to initially form (48 hours from what I recall).

 

[Novacat]

This doesn't resonate with my experience on mtg. My US carriers have lots and lots of sunk ships in their history tab. Many more than my BBs.

As I said in my post, it depends entirely on if the opposing fleet has any CVs at all. CVs are devastating against the Italian and German navies because neither have any CVs nor will they ever build any. The Japanese only start with four CVs, and, because of how incompetent the AI is at ship procurement especially with limited resources, is unlikely to acquire more. Meanwhile the US and UK start with a lot of CVs, with a good chance of acquiring even more through ship construction.

The bug is that any fighters at all in a fleet effectively projects a bubble of invulnerability over that fleet. Even if it is a single light carrier with only 40 fighters, can effectively nullify an entire strike contingent from four 1940 carriers with 400 planes. I think the real issue, ultimately, is that fighters are not effective at defending bombers from other fighters while striking, so those 40 fighters are basically able to keep 200 bombers in a perpetual state of disruption.

 

[ivhokie]

Japan's AI will now make a lot of carriers. Usually in mid 41 Japan will have 8-9 carriers. I did a couple in spectator mode and Japan basically only makes carriers and destroyers.

 

[Novacat]

Japan's AI will now make a lot of carriers. Usually in mid 41 Japan will have 8-9 carriers. I did a couple in spectator mode and Japan basically only makes carriers and destroyers.

So basically the same as the US AI. Which is ultimately a problem because now you are required to have a capital ship line to stop your CVs from getting obliterated by enemy capital ship fire.